Stoicism

What they forget to teach you in school is that Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD) was a student of the teachings of Epictetus (55-135 AD). One man was an emperor, the other a former slave who lived simply and wrote not a word. But of the Stoics, Epictetus seems to me to be the one to read.

The value of Epictetus is that he is, literally, a practical philosopher --- if you're looking for deep thoughts, big ideas or anything that leads to the linguistic and mathematical analysis we now call philosophy, he's everything you don't want. His concerns are the here and now: reality, life, death. And he's not about to quibble over their ambiguities.

As Epictetus has it, your first task is to look hard at reality and see it for what it is. Then your decisions start: What can you control? What's out of your control? And if you care about the stuff that's out of your control, can you really complain when life deals you dirt? And why oh why are you even bothering to look at your neighbor to see how he/she is doing?

Readers of Buddhism will find this point-of-view very familiar.

The difference: In an interesting translation --- the original lectures were written in Koine, Greek, the language of the New Testament --- Epictetus is so blunt that you can't dance around his meaning. Like this:

-- Grow up! Who cares what others think about you?

-- You have been given your own work to do. Get to it right now, do your best at it, and don't be concerned with who is watching you.

-- Nothing can truly be taken from us. There is nothing to lose. Inner peace begins when we stop saying of things, “I have lost it” and instead say, “It has been returned from where it came from.”

-- Except for extreme physical abuse, other people cannot hurt you unless you allow them to.

-- The universe we inhabit is the best possible universe. Fix your resolve on expecting justice and order, and they will increasingly reveal themselves in a divine intelligence whose intentions direct the universe.

In summary: Drink the wine, but not too much. Enjoy the world, only in perspective. And, above all, guard your mind and use it well.